Jesus had plenty to say regarding his impending crucifixion. For instance, he said he had power to lay down his life and to take it up again, thus showing his confidence in his resurrection. He also declared that, "Greater love has no man but that he should lay down his life for his friends." These two statements alone show that he was willing to take our sins upon himself in order to rescue us from hell.
Furthermore, the scripture declares that Christ's mission to save whosoever believed in him and his atoning work was planned before the universe was created. It wasn't some half-baked plan or, as some think, that everything went sideways on Jesus. The gospels record several incidents where Christ could have been killed. The first one was when Harod had all the children two years or under killed in Bethlehem. The Pharisees and a synagogue congregation tried to murder him as well but he slipped through the crowd for his time was not yet come.
God is portrayed in the Bible as the heavenly Father because he has tried so hard to protect humanity from harm but without turning us into robots. Israel, through whom he established the lineage of Christ, constantly went through periods of apostasy but God didn't utterly snuff them all out. Think about this. Would you or I tolerate the horrendous disrespect and scorn continually heaped on us as is dished out to God? I doubt it.
Old Testament prophesies also predicted that God's innocent son would take our punishment for sin. Read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. It's like he saw and recorded the whole trial and crucifixion of Christ. I could dig up more instances but this blog post would become too long.
You Think You're Going to Heaven is my next book and I hope to delve deeply into this and other questions which people invariably ask. I've wondered about these things myself and I want to share the answers I've found.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave me a comment on this blog. All reasonable comments will be published.